A weblog for students engaged in doctoral studies in the field of human rights. It is intended to provide information about contemporary developments, references to new publications and material of a practical nature.

Friday, 18 December 2009

Is Armed Conflict Worsening? Are There More or Less Deaths?

Scholars and activists in the human rights field, and especially those who work in the area of international tribunals, atrocity crimes and accountability, often bolster their arguments by asserting that ‘the twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history’. A related claim holds that today there are more deaths in internal armed conflict, as compared to international armed conflict.Perhaps it is my own inherently optimistic nature, and my desire to demonstrate that there has actually been improvement in recent decades, that has made me wary of these arguments. I concede that there were more conflict-related deaths in the twentieth century than at any previous period of human history, but with the added detail that most of these deaths took place in the first half of the century, that is, related to the two world wars, and not in the second half. The point here is that the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, the prohibition of the resort to armed force to settle disputes in the United Nations Charter, and recognition of the crime of aggression at Nuremberg, have all made the world a safer and not a more dangerous place for human beings.As for the issue of deaths in internal as opposed to international armed conflict, I suspect this is merely a way of deflected the observation that there have been many fewer deaths in international armed conflict since 1945. Prior to 1945 we didn't even pay much attention to deaths in non-international armed conflict, whereas I think that we count them now. In the past, they were an internal matter that escaped international scrutiny.Admittedly my observations are anecdotal, and are also perhaps coloured by the result that I would like to reach. They are based on inutition, rather than hard research. More generally, I have often been suspicious of numerical claims as to the number of deaths in armed conflict. Just look at the conflict in Darfur as an example. A year ago, I heard the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court claim there were 50,000 deaths a month in the region due to 'genocide'. In February, I heard Canadian MP Irwin Cotler call for bombing of the airports and blockading the harbours of Sudan in order to prevent the 'ongoing genocide'. Yet the reports from the Office of the High Commisioner for Human Rights suggest that the conflict-related deaths in Darfur now amount to a few thousand each year. Alex de Waal has written that you are more likely to be killed from conflict in Baltimore than you are in Darfur.I was once challenged rather aggressively by some human rights activitists while teaching a course who insisted that it was necessary to exaggerate numbers of deaths in order to mobilise support. One thing that inflated claims do is deflect our attention from the more urgent matters. A boosted estimate of deaths in Darfur takes attention away from Gaza and Sri Lanka, for example.There are scientists at work on this, using statistical analysis to debate the matter. One of the active research groups is in Vancouver, Canada, and it has produced the Human Security Report. Here is what the website says: ‘The first Human Security Report documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. Published by Oxford University Press, the Report argues that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the UN, which took place in the wake of the Cold War.’ (http://www.humansecurityreport.info/). Others disagree, however, and there is a very recent account of debate in the academic literature at: http://www.hsrgroup.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=469. Here is an article taking the view that the numbers are rather high, published in the British Medical Journal: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7659/1482 (for the answer to it, see: http://www.hsrgroup.org/images/stories/Documents/JCR_EstimatingWarDeaths.pdf). But I’m struck by the fact that even its estimates are rather low compared with some of the extravagant figures that get tossed around.For years I have been looking for someone to do a doctorate on the statistical measurement of human rights violations. The number of deaths related to armed conflict would be one part of this. Anybody interested?

1 comment:

It is not exactly counting the number of deaths related to armed conflict, but a friend of mine is doing something interesting on the use of new technology to measure and map human rights violations: http://irevolution.wordpress.com/tag/human-rights-2-0/, I agree it would be interesting to have a full dissertation on the # of deaths related to armed conflict, but I would add to this that it also seems crucial that "we regular PhD students in human rights" explore new ways of making information on human rights relevant on the ground, as well as taking into account the information of those actually most affected by the violations.

The Editorial Team

W. Schabas, Y. McDermott, J. Powderly, N. Hayes

William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr YvonneMcDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.

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Interested in PhD studies in human rights?

Students interested in pursuing a doctorate in the field of human rights are encouraged to explore the possibility of working at Middlesex University under the supervision of Professor William A. Schabas and his colleagues. For inquiries, write to: w.schabas@mdx.ac.uk.